Megasett, Ellesmere and JdotB Midnight Developer Interview - Mythic+, Prey & Healing

Posted 2025/10/11 at 7:36 AM by Jaydaa

MegasettEllesmereMythic+ Dungeon Pool

There's a variety of factors that go into selecting the seasonal Mythic+ Dungeon pool. Sometimes it's about adding texture or variety in the types of encounter or layouts. Other times it's about theme or providing context to the current evolving story.

When updating legacy dungeons for the current season, it's often done by developers who play Mythic+ obsessively. They'll taste the encounter 'soup' and if it feels old or outdated they'll make changes while still trying to maintain the essence or soul of the encounter as well as making it visually impactful to the standards of modern WoW.

If you look at dungeon design over the last 20 years, you'll definitely see an evolving philosophy. Specifically, back in BFA there wasn't a set idea of what Mythic+ trash should look like and it felt a bit more wild west. With a better understanding of player skill, inclinations, and aversions, we've been able to iterate and design things that feel legible and not overwhelming.

Encounter Visual Clarity & Addons

With the impending addon disarmament, it puts the burden on encounter designers to be able to tell the encounters story and mechanics through legible telegraphing. Players not addons need to be able to read the game state and make decisions based on that information.

For melee-designated healers (Mistweavers, Holy Paladins), there's not a hard and fast rule for how they're handled in regards to mechanics and often need to work with the class team to identify particular situations and designations. But often mechanics that are particularly more deadly to a given role we try to spawn fewer more intentional enemies.

We don't have anything to announce as a new feature for Mythic+ in MIdnight. We want to provide some space for players to digest the addon disarmament and have a better feel for what content looks like in this new ecosystem.

For our Trash philosophy, we want to make mechanics apparent. It's not so much about doing less, but more about concentrating the more vexing enemies into strategic places. Things that don't need a castbar no longer do, so that when you do see a castbar you know it probably does need to be interrupted.

There's a continual need to update LFG tools as well as provide the information necessary for LFG players to make the decisions needed to overcome encounters. For encounter design, it's about ensuring that information is accessible for everyone.

Healing in PvE

In regards to Healer DPS, it's not something we're tuning around for Raid or Mythic+. It's something that players can do to optimize for sure and often can be fun in that regard. As for how it should be tuned, that's probably a question better left to the class team.

We understand why healers feel it's necessary to have raid frame indicators for spells that are incoming on allies that are semi-lethal at higher key levels. Our solution to this is two-fold: First, reduce the visual clutter and noise that exists with current spells and UI elements. Second, also making classes a bit more readable and playable to free up some cognitive space that allows players to internalize those mechanics without the need for a WeakAura.

From an encounter design point of view, we love that the community comes up with a certain meta or valuation of raid buffs and utility that they consider strong for a particular encounter or dungeon or overall throughout the season. We just want to offer a robust enough set of challenges that everyone has a moment to shine and can find success up to a certain level.

Beyond that we do know that eventually it comes down to stripping everything away and going as fast as you can and that trickles down and can be problematic. But we want try to mix up the challenges we can such as with the Mythic+ rotation each season.

Prey

As an opt-in overlay outdoor world system, we're really not looking to push Prey on anyone. If you want to stick to your preferred PvE content, then feel free. We want this to feel complementary to the Delve loop in terms of the Great Vault but beyond that there's no player power associated with it.

We do think this is an incredibly fun system that offers a new challenge for players of all skills, but also ones incredibly skilled where the outdoor world might not feel as difficult. So much of our challenge is limited to instances, so we're looking forward to bringing more of that to the open world.

As for the difficulty, we don't want the difficulty to reach Ky'veza week one levels, but we want it to be more than just higher health and damage numbers. The exact tuning for Prey is still up for debate as we want to take player feedback into consideration. If you're well-geared and have learned the Prey encounters, they will begin to feel easier for sure but hopefully not trivial.

Essentially, Prey isn't a new thing for players to do, but rather a new way to explore and interact with the open world. The gameplay and war mode opportunities as well as difficulty options have all been a labor of love.

Comment by Lynexia1Of all the non-answers for the healing questions these are the most non-answers ever lol.

they might as well have just said "Yo just let us cook, it'll be ok"Comment by serangelthe full Encounter Visual Clarity & Addons - yes we killed addons - wehere doing nothing useful about the non useful ui parts enjoy! really no change to mythic plus for all this? yeah season 1 in midnight is dead hopeful these clues people fix or give up on this by season 2. this is no flying in legion ALL OVER AGAINComment by ancineniThey'll taste the encounter 'soup' and if it feels old or outdated they'll make changes while still trying to maintain the essence or soul of the encounter as well as making it visually impactful to the standards of modern WoW.Comment by glassleoOf all the non-answers for the healing questions these are the most non-answers ever lol.

they might as well have just said "Yo just let us cook, it'll be ok"Comment by ChochuOh can't wait until all of this blows up on their dev teams faces at release M+ and raids content at Midnight, it should be entertaining to watch them been stubborn and them trying to do a 180 to fix things up for the amount of player bailing because of this nonsense that no one asked for or even complain about.

Most of the players cheering about this changes are people that most likely don't use addons and will not use them regardless. Look at how they prune affixes on M+ content since Dragonflight because there was no need for them anymore and people still fail more than ever on that content.Comment by AowenThat "solution" for incoming spell indicators is laughable. Unless there is literally a single caster in a HUGE pull that is never happening.Comment by TastelikelemonHealers are completely doomed healing high keys as Blizz will NOT keep their promises to make it more "clear" and understanding , gl pushing for rating , gl pugging first few weeks till people learn the new dungeons...its goind bad, really bad.Comment by dabone1337They'll taste the encounter 'soup' and if it feels old or outdated they'll make changes while still trying to maintain the essence or soul of the encounter as well as making it visually impactful to the standards of modern WoW.Comment by eojsmadaHaving done some healing on Alpha, the mechanics are not an issue. The only issues I have seen so far are relative to damage from mobs and healing. And even then the healing portion, having already been tuned once, has more to do with understanding the fight and which spell to use for that fight (or part of the fight) versus trying to just spam heal. With that require higher coordination at higher keys? Probably, but all of the achievements and rewards will be still be very accessible.Comment by 80sBeholderEyesWar Mode is a labor of love? That is stupid. Give me war mode abilities in PVE. Shouldn't have to enter a faction war to use emerald communion or illidari's grasp. So incredibly stupid that it's locked to that.Comment by SotapNothing about M+ Solo Queue? Seeya then, I vowed im done with the LFG tool, this game acts its age.. ancient.Comment by 0VapyrSpell indication - and buff tracking - is killing healing even in PvE for most people I know.

We're not gonna put up with this when we know how it can be, and other MMOs either don't have the difficulty to justify this crap or let us track things with more notable effects built into their frames.

I won't be touching my healers until I can actually see wtf is going on.Comment by AlustrielThat "solution" for incoming spell indicators is laughable. Unless there is literally a single caster in a HUGE pull that is never happening.Comment by JigglypuffMy "cognitive load" is irrelevant if you don't even give us a way to see buffs/debuffs easily on the base UI, or customize them in the slightest... I've been trying to get used to using the default raid frames over the past week, but I'm missing so much because I simply can't read those tiny icons at a glance. Nevermind the lack of emphasis on dispellable debuffs.Comment by DraekenThat "solution" for incoming spell indicators is laughable. Unless there is literally a single caster in a HUGE pull that is never happening.Comment by hawthorntreeI do not understand blizzard's position on this is the slightest. Why are they happy to show DPS who is being targeted via the medium most relevant to them (the mob's cast bars) but won't show healers the same information on the medium most visible to us (our party frames)?

We don't "feel it's necessary". It's not something we feel forced to adopt against our will. We like it. We've found ways to get information that feels like a missing piece of what should be available by default. Being able to see incoming damage on frames IS what reduces cognitive load. Trying to parse through a bunch of moving nameplates is distracting and painful. Blizzard says they want to be clearer and more communicative with their base UI about what is happening, but if they stick with this decision they sure as hell aren't following their own words in regards to healers.

Ask DPS how they'd feel not being able to see who mobs are casting on. The response will not be positive. Stop subjecting healers to this double standard.Comment by bippy12so many healers are going to just quit the game if raid frames arent updated to be fully customizableComment by ancineniThey'll taste the encounter 'soup' and if it feels old or outdated they'll make changes while still trying to maintain the essence or soul of the encounter as well as making it visually impactful to the standards of modern WoW.Comment by Arthazfor 20 years they had dog poo on UI and spell clarity and you think they gonna clean all that up in midnight? they dont even have dps meter in alpha

all these will be done in last titan expComment by tottie1227not one question about the future of healing add ons....